


Landmarks in Space

by 2ndA



Category: Firefly
Genre: Apocalypse, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-24
Updated: 2014-05-05
Packaged: 2018-01-16 19:46:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1359586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2ndA/pseuds/2ndA
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Apocalypse in the Firefly 'verse. </p><p> Includes violence, lawlessness, allusions to rape, etc.  Set after the movie, so contains spoilers for that and the show.  First epigraph is from the Gnostic Gospels of Thomas, first chapter title is from the show</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. "half of history is hiding the truth"

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jain/gifts).



_Have you discovered the beginning, that you can ask about the end?_

 

When the Alliance falls, it falls hard. Bullies usually do, so Mal can’t say as he’s overly surprised. The speed of it, though—now that’s a mite unexpected. Two things in particular he hadn’t seen coming, and one was how quickly it would topple: the monolith he had fought through four bitter, bloodstained years of war is swept away in a little over two weeks. Between the time they leave Mr. Universe’s satellite and the time they limp into drydock, there are no fewer than three coups and countercoups led by various government or military factions. By the time they have _Serenity_ patched up enough to fly, there are reports of bread riots and sectarian violence in the streets of the Core planets. Alliance control is breaking down, warlords sweeping in behind: man abhors a power vacuum.

The reports on the cortex are spotty and contradictory, mostly ‘cause the Central Information Ministry is no longer broadcasting regularly, but also because Serenity’s media cortex has always been a mite finicky. Only Wash could get it to work right for centralized channels, and Mal can’t bring himself to fiddle with it now Wash is gone. It’s foolhearted and sentimental, he knows, but…well, it’s his gorram ship. ‘Sides, all the news they’re missing is bad news, and they’ve had enough of that lately.

***

The crew only talks about the fall of the Alliance once, really, for all it’s on their minds. The night they limp into Eavesdown with the quickly patched repairs just barely holding, Mal sends Jayne out for food and he comes back with rice and fish wrapped in old newsprint. Simon immediately smooths out the stained paper and starts to read. Kaylee puts down her tea and looks over his shoulder.

“Funny thing, all that big-and-powerful bein’ gone so sudden,” Jayne remarks with his mouth full. He’s left greasy fingerprints all over a picture captioned MOB TORCHES CAP. CITY COUNCIL HALL.

Simon shrugs, “It seems things weren’t as unified as they appeared from the outside.”

The article is little more than a compilation of other news clips, but it becomes evident that over the years, the Core Council had filled its mid-level positions with the disgruntled and disenfranchised. Just goes to show the value of keeping your friends close and putting your enemies out the airlock, since several of these disgruntled bureaucrats had been lying in wait, biding their time until something came along to destabilize the council. That _something_ had been a report about a distant planet named Miranda, where the Alliance had made a terrible mistake. The exact source of what the press is calling the Miranda Memo is still unknown—it had been broadcast from some sort of multi-band signal satellite—but maintaining public support outside while fighting numerous internecine enemies from the inside had proven too much for the Alliance. ( _Serenity_ ’s unintentional role is the _second_ unexpected thing about the end of the worlds. Mal wonders if this means he wins the war.)

Jayne squints at the picture. “Like a gorram mountain, the Allliance was. All big and…mountain-ish.”

“It did seem like a fairly permanent arrangement,” Inara concedes.

“Like a tornado,” Kaylee suggests, “Like those wind storms we had back home, just comin’ along, sucking things up, putting ‘em down wherever it pleased.”

Simon nods, “Like some kind of vast, intricate machine.”

“Like a cup!”

Mal waits a moment to see if River’s comment will make more sense given time. Nope. “How’s that, little one?”

River looks at him like they have never met. “Where’s Zoe?” she asks.

“River, the captain asked you a question,” Simon interjects. He glances over the top of his paper and might have pursued it, except that Zoe enters right then. Jayne, who’s been odd around Zoe since Wash died, jumps up to give her a seat (Mal has wondered, in passing, if the mercenary hit his head on something during all that ruckus on Mr. Universe’s satellite). Like most of Jayne’s courtesies, it doesn’t quite work: he jostles the table, knocking over a bowl of rice and Kaylee’s teacup. The cup—one of a decorative set given to Inara by an admirer—shatters in a spray of tea. They never really get the stain out of the tablecloth and the whole crew is left picking up random glass slivers for days. Between the cursing and the mopping, Mal never does get an answer to his question.

***

The business of Persephone has always been business, especially at the Docks. The Alliance has fallen, but commerce rolls on as it always has…only more so, now that there are no courts to set the prices, no Alliance soldiers to enforce them, no lawmasters to investigate fraud. Anything can be had for a price, and all the prices are negotiated by force; even Badger, who has always been a small fish in a big, filthy pond, travels with a gang of bodyguards now to protect him from roving mobs of looters. To top it all off, the air control tower has been shut down (one of the local captains of industry is holding it hostage, basically, until the trading citizens pay a king’s ransom). There are still smugglers willing to dock blind, but local goods have become even more dear. There’s a thriving black market. Mal fears that he’ll wake up some day to find Serenity’s titanium plates have been liberated by one side or the other. It's getting harder and harder to have no side at all.

Three days after they land, he’s on the way back to Serenity after a failing to acquire supplies when a kid darts out of the shadows on the edge of a marketplace and tugs on his sleeve. Mal nearly jumps out his skin.

The raggedy boy dances back a few steps, “C’mon,” he wheedles.

“What?!” Mal squints; he’s positive that he’s never seen this child in his life.

“I said, _c’mon_. I have something to show you.”

“Nothin’ I want to see,” Mal says, and keeps on walking.

“How do you know if you ain’t seen it yet?”

Mal turns, walking backwards but looking at the kid, who is maybe all of thirteen years old. He slows to a stop. “All right, then, what is it?” The boy ducks into an alley, around a corner. Mal hesitates: it’s dangerous to walk through the marketplace, but the back streets are downright deadly. Still, goods are scarce enough that he won’t turn anything down out of hand. He follows the boy down the alley and under the tarp of a small lean-to, where a little girl is drawing on a grimy tablet in the corner. They look alike, boy and girl, the same wide-spaced dark eyes: brother and sister, maybe, cousins.

“She’s little but she’s strong,” the boy is saying. “She can cook, sew a little. And she’s smart…she can learn anything you want her to.”

“Well, good for her,” Mal replies, puzzled ,“but you said you had something to—”

“ _Any_ thing,” the boy says again, insistently. Significantly. “Anything you want her to. But we won’t take nothing but coin for her. My ma said not to come back with none of that Alliance script. It ain’t worth nothing now.”

Mal looks at the girl; she is ten, twelve at the outside. He puts Serenity in the air as soon as he reaches the berth: air control or no, he won’t stay on Persephone a moment longer. He didn’t fight a war to stay land-locked.

***

Even before the Alliance collapsed, the Operative had left them precious few places to find refuge— _if your quarry goes to ground, leave no ground to go to_ —so Triumph is the best of bad choices. Mal picks it mostly because it’s not far from Persephone, so they can save on fuel, and the locals are kindly disposed to them since they chased off those brigands. (He briefly considers Whitefall, since Patience will run that world just the same as she always has, Alliance or no, but he’s now dealt with Patience twice and she’s tried to shoot him—both times! Can’t say as he favors those odds overmuch.) Besides, when he thinks back on it, that harvest festival on Triumph was the last time they were all together and well (well, before than _yun bun du_ Saffron…Yolanda…whatever). The thought has a sort of magic in the memory.

***

Triumph turns out to be a good enough choice.  A border world whose mineral deposits were exhausted decades ago, it’s never been much use to the central planets.  The mail is delivered a little less frequently now that the Alliance has fallen, but otherwise, life there is pretty much as it was before.   The people raise goats and the greens to feed them.  They eat goat meat and goat milk and goat cheese.   They shear goats and spin goat’s wool clothing and goat’s wool blankets.  By the outside of a month, more than a few of _Serenity_ ’s crew would be quite happy to never see another goat again. 

It’s quiet, though, and safe.  There’s little enough crime ‘cause there’s near nothing worth stealing; little enough disagreement ‘cause everybody does the same work for the same product. The whole planet runs on barter, each community self-sufficient , and once the crew shows itself willing to work, they’re accepted with equanimity, though not enthusiasm.  Jayne and Mal go to work in the shearing houses—heavy work, but simple.  Simon finds himself sewing up minor cuts and treating whatever colds and fevers persist beyond the local remedies. (Mal suggests he hang out a shingle as a vet, but that gets Simon’s nose all out of joint, who knows why.)    Kaylee offers to rig up a more efficient milking apparatus in the barns; the locals thank her, debate the matter for an hour, and then ask that she please just keep the one they have in working order.  Inara teaches River to spin.  The girl soon has a whole passel of kid-goats following her around like she’s a mother duck. 

There’s a bit of kerfluffle when Zoe becomes the first woman to ever work in the slaughterhouses, but she’s so matter-of-fact about it—strolls in one morning and says she’s had enough of salads and will work for meat, same as any other—that things settle down soon enough.  They hardly see her anymore. Slaughtering work starts late in the morning, so she’s still abed when the rest of the crew leaves.  She comes home after dark, calm and smelling of the cold, faintly metallic river water that is piped into the slaughterhouse washroom.  Mal must say he’s a bit surprised by her choice, but he isn’t her…that is, it’s not like they…it’s hardly his place to go questioning her. 

The fourth day of every week is the day of rest, which seems to consist mostly of everybody in town getting scrubbed up real good and going to sit in sun-bleached grass of the town square in communal silence.  Mal makes the whole crew go the first few weeks, in the interest of making friends and valuable contacts, but the fourth time they all troop over (all except Zoe, who hadn’t emerged from her room at the appointed hour and Mal wasn’t about to go in after her), River has a bit of a screaming fit and he doesn’t insist on it again. 

Kaylee still goes, sometimes with Inara, sometimes on her own.  She says she just likes to sit and be around folk, even if they don’t talk much.  Simon escorts her once or twice—Mal has taken good care not to notice what’s going on between those two—but usually he stays to tend the small garden he’s planted in the field where they’ve berthed Serenity.  The doctor’s a strange sight in his starched white shirt and a ridiculous sunhat, getting his hands dirty and taking data on which plants grow fastest or produce best. Seems a long way from the proper Core gentleman who had boarded _Serenity_ with a mysterious box all that time ago…but then, Mal figures, they’re all a long way from where they used to be, and a longer way still from home.   

Restlessly, Mal walks from stem to stern and back.  He pauses in front of Zoe’s closed door, then continues on.   He sticks his head in the galley, sees Jayne at the table, sharpening knives.  
  
“Gonna go for a walk—see what’s about.  Care to come with?”  It’s a sad day when Jayne’s your best bet for company, but Inara and Kaylee have gone to the gathering in town, Simon’s grubbing in the dirt, and Zoe…he just doesn’t know about Zoe. She quit her job in the slaughterhouse two days ago, with as little notice as she’d started it.  No one knows why.

Jayne looks up speculatively.  “Okay,”  he says after a moment.  “Lemme put on my boots.  You seen my knife?  Hey! If we find anything good, I got dibs.”

Mal just nods, secure in the thought that they won’t find anything good.  They’ve got _Serenity_ put down in a field ten minutes’ walk from the nearest house, and there’s nothing out back but scrubby hills. 

River falls in with them as they head out the rear hatch.  She’s wearing a sundress with two pockets patched on the skirtfront and each holds a ball of goat’s wool.  She knits as she walks, clever thin fingers moving so quickly that Mal gets dizzy watching them.  Maybe River does, too, because she never looks at what she’s making.  Girl has a right mathematical mind, though, never needs no pattern, just seems to make things up out of her own head.  Of course, some of the things she makes are fairly odd—she’d knitted Simon that ridiculous sunhat, made a stocking cap for Jayne with a peak that folds back to become a scarf and then divides into mittens, a tea cozy that looks just like _Serenity_ ’s coolant system, but with additional purple ruffles.  Inara says she doesn’t know where the girl learned—just picked it up somewhere.

Mal and River walk along in companionable silence; Jayne hums tunelessly to himself and picks at his fingernails with a knife.  In the distance, a goatherd minds his flock.  It’s mighty soothing.  They’ve been walking about five minutes when they come across a small building.   One window’s already busted in and it’s clearly abandoned, so Mal is content to let Jayne investigate: one large room with a scattering of chairs and a slab of slate hung on the wall.  A rain-soaked bookshelf is moldering in front of the broken window.

“Oh!”  River exclaims quietly, turning slowly around and around in the center of the room.  “I remember _school_ ,”  she says, wistfully, the word like something foreign in her mouth. She trails her fingers along the edge of the chalkboard and leaves dusty prints across the spines of books. 

“D’you reckon it’s recess-time?”  Jayne asks, peeking under one of the desks, like maybe the pupils are hiding there. 

“Day of rest?” Mal suggests.

“They don’t come here anymore, not on any day,” River tugs at one of the waterlogged books on the shelf.  “All the days are rest-days…not-school days.  Work-days,” she corrects herself, “work in the slaughterhouses, in the wool-works, rope-walks, in the pens.  No more storytime.  Not relevant.”   The book comes loose suddenly and she tumbles backwards.  Unfazed, she opens to the first page and starts reading from her new position sprawled on the floor.

“They ain’t got school no more?!”  Jayne sounds so scandalized that Mal looks up from where he’s been studying a map taped to the wall.

“Guess not.  Alliance ain’t around to enforce the truancy laws.  ‘Sides, nobody’s collecting taxes ‘n even teachers  won’t work for free.  Never figured you to be a fan of universal education, Jayne.”

“Well, kids gotta go to school! Otherwise…well…well, otherwise they just get up to troublesomeness an’ delinquencies!”

“Lord knows we can’t afford more competition in that area,” Mal mutters.  He means it as a joke, but Jayne takes it as affirmation.

“Damn straight! Don’t go to school, you ain’t get socialized proper.  Don’t got no culture, brain turns to oatmush.  Why, where’d I be without I can read and cipher?”  Jayne demands. 

River looks up from her book, astonished, “ _You_ can cipher?!”

“Hush up, you! I know up to _five times eight is thirty-two_!” Jayne huffs in consternation, “What’re things coming to, that’s what I want to know!  Kids workin’ all day, no schooling…” He walks out into the sunshine shaking his head.  “Troublesomeness and delinquencies, Mal,”  he calls over his shoulder.  “You mark my words.”

Mal stares after him.  “Fancy that.  It appears our Jayne has hidden depths, little one,”  he remarks at last. “Hidden depths and deep-held opinions on educational policy.”  

“Five times eight is forty,” River replies absently.  She holds up the book—a battered old warhorse that Mal recognizes from his own school days:  _Accounts and Legends of the Civilizations of Earth_. “Can I keep this?”

***

Mal lets her keep the book—Lord knows no one else is using it—but he never sees her reading it.  In fact, he only sees it again once:  he walks into the galley one evening to boil some water for tea and finds her drying dinner dishes.  She’s mooning about a little, doesn’t answer when he speaks to her, but seems to be doing  a fair job.  Dishes in one stack, cups in another, a pile of spoons.  There’s a crate on the counter, used to hold tinned lychee paste if the label’s to be believed.  Mal peers into it: knives and chopsticks.  He reaches to add the spoons, but River snaps out of her daze and pulls the crate away. 

“Don’t!” She wraps her arms around the crate possessively.

“I was helping,” Mal says, bewildered. “I can be helpful!”

“Not for spoons. For _zhi_.”  River eyes him suspiciously and goes back to sorting plates.

When she ducks into the pantry, Mal sneaks another peek into the crate.  On closer inspections, he sees a few knitting needles mixed in with the chopsticks.  One of Kaylee's wrenches, Jayne's missing dagger, a scalpel from the infirmary.  He tips the crate, hears the skitter of Inara's lacquered hairpins and then a _thump_ as the red book hits the side.  In Mandarin, there's a special category of nouns for things that are long and thin, like knives or needles, like a box wrench or a chopstick.  The number modifying andy group of these nouns must end in _zhi_.  Books are not _zhi_ , not in any grammar Mal's ever heard of.

***

Mal sleeps and dreams of Reavers—they’ve ensnared _Serenity_ with their grappling claws, swarmed over her; he can hear them prying at her shiny panels, rapping on her windows…he wakes when his breath catches in his throat.  It takes him a second to realize that someone _is_ actually tapping on his door. 

“Cap’n?  Cap—it’s me.  Kaylee.  Are you awake?” 

He stumbles toward the door, then back to his bunk (no pants), and finally opens the hatch to find Kaylee looking small and worried out in the corridor. “Mnn?” 

“Somethin’s wrong, Cap’n.”

Mal scrubs his face, still half-dreaming.  Are those orange monkeys printed on her pajamas? “What?”

“I said, somethin’s wrong.  With _Serenity_.  She ain’t right.”

“ _What’s_ wrong, I meant,”  Mal forces himself to stay patient.  God he’s tired.  Two more hours and he’ll have to be at the shearing sheds.  He feels like he hasn’t slept a wink since Miranda. 

“I don’t know,”  Kaylee says and she sounds so young and worried that there’s nothing for it but struggle into boots and trip up to the pilot’s console.  Everything looks ok.  Nothing wrong in the engine room.  He trips on a bootlace, bumps into a tray of tools.  A screwdriver rolls toward the engine before being overcome by gravity and the slope of the floor…which is steeper than it should be.  Steeper than it used to be.  Mal stares at it for a moment, and then he’s racing to the starboard hatch, his untied boots loud on the grating. 

He stands out in the middle of the field, looking back at his lopsided ship.  It looks broken, leaning slightly to port.  Gradually, the rest of his crew joins him.  Kaylee stands petrified, her hand over her mouth, and then turns her head turned into Simon’s shoulder like she can’t bear to look.  The doctor just stares.  Inara keeps glancing from one side to the other: what’s wrong with this picture?  Jayne stumbles out last, glances around with a jaw-cracking yawn: “Hey—where’s t’other shuttle?”

And then, like he’s waking from a trance, Simon looks around, counting heads, coming up short.  “Wait…where’s _River_?”

***

“Girl took my shuttle,”  Mal says, wonderingly.  “Girl _took_. My gorram. _Shuttle_!” He still can’t wrap his mind around it.  A year ago, he’d set off from this planet with a crew of eight, a crazy red-headed psycho-stowaway, and a shiny Firefly class ship with two (count ‘em, _two_ ) short-range shuttles.  He was glad enough to get shut of that crazy Yolanda, but now he’s down two crew members and a third has just made off….with his gorram shuttle.

“I still think we should consider the possibility that she was taken against her will,” Simon says stoutly, and Mal’s never had a sister, but he reckons it must be love because Simon Tam is a lot of things, but stupid ain’t one.  Someone very familiar with the ship had altered _Serenity_ ’s gravity suspension so the shuttle take-off wouldn’t knock them all out of their bunks.  Someone who knew River’s habits had packed up her few things . The box of _zhi_ is missing. There’s no getting around it: girl took his gorram shuttle!

***

Mal orders Jayne to go round up what the Triumphians owe them, sends Kaylee to go adjust the grav suspension so they can fly the hell off this little planet, tells Simon to salvage whatever he can from the garden.  The shuttle is a short-range vehicle: she can’t have gone far. They’re leaving in an hour. 

He’s puzzling over maps— _if I were a crazy thieving girl with a brain like a busted clock, where would I be?—_ when Zoe walks into the galley and announces that she won’t be coming with them.

Mal sighs.  He does not have time for this. “Zoe, this is my ship and you are my mate and we’re leaving in forty—no, thirty-eight—minutes. End of discussion.”

“ _You’re_ leaving, maybe.  But I ain’t.  I’ll stay here.”

From the corner of his eye, Mal sees Jayne reach for one of the chairs, ready to settle in like a spectator to this little spat. “Do you want me to start on the long list of reasons why that ain’t happening?”

“I’ll stay here,”  Zoe repeats, “until the baby is born.”

Jayne misses the chair and lands hard on his ass.

***

Zoe has it all planned out.  Seems she’s saved up some money, and she can trade for anything else she needs by knitting.  (“Who do you think taught River?” she asks, amused, when Mal stares at her.)  He offers to leave someone with her: Simon would be the obvious choice, but Zoe’s says he’ll never stay behind while _Serenity_ goes after his sister, and she’s probably right.  When Mal suggests Jayne, Zoe just looks at him with one raised eyebrow and half a smile.  Yup, and she’s probably right about that, too. He suggests Kaylee, just for company.  But Zoe says she doesn’t need company as badly as he needs a mechanic.  

“Inara?” Mal asks finally, because she’s not crew, not his to order about, but maybe if he asked her nicely…

Zoe laughs, “Oh, I think you might find you need Inara, too.  I’ll be fine.  Always have been, before.  Leave me the port-side shuttle—I’ll just set up housekeeping and you can pick me up on your way back through.”

“You don’t have to live in the shuttle,” Mal protests.  There’s still a little cash money left from the job before the job before last: how much could they possible charge in rent on this _gou shi_ planet?

“Shuttle’ll suit me better than fine.”  Zoe give him a sly smile: “’Sides, if I got your shuttle, there’s nothing for it but you got to come back for me.” 

She’s teasing, of course, and Mal means to think up a snappy reply, but what comes out of his mouth is deadly serious. 

“I’d always come back for you, shuttle or no.  I wouldn’t never leave you behind.”   She ducks her head into the awkward silence that follows—Mal wants to bite his tongue.  He should’ve said something light, make it all a joke.  They don’t talk about serious things, him and Zoe.  Well, life and death and strategy, yes, but not…this. 

Mal suspects she’s had it planned for a good long time.

***

Kaylee claps her hands together when Zoe makes her announcement.  “A _baby_!  Boy or a girl?  When’s it due? Oh, I hope it’s a little girl.  Not that a boy wouldn’t be just shiny,”  she adds quickly, not wanting to give offense, “I’m sure he’d be right handsome.”

The first mate just laughs at her enthusiasm.  “First question, I don’t know, and second question, the doctor says sometime in the early fall.” 

“Probably October; I’ll know more when the scan finishes.”  Simon looks as proud as though the baby were his.

“ _Gongxi_ ,”  Inara says,  but she doesn’t sound nearly as surprised as she should be, which makes Mal wonder –not for the first time—about womenfolk and their ways of knowing things.

Jayne mumbles something that might be the traditional ‘thousand good wishes,’ further evidence that he was not, all appearances to the contrary, raised in a gorram barn.

“Me and Jayne’ll help you move your things into Inara’s shuttle,” Kaylee volunteers.  “You oughtn’t to be hauling stuff, not in a delicate condition.  Ain’t that right, Jayne?”

“Hey, don’t look at me none!” Jayne grumbles, “I ain’t got nobody knocked up.  Didn’t steal no shuttle, neither.  Where’re we goin’, anyhow?”   

“Oh!” Kaylee turns in the doorway.  “I near forgot. “  She holds out a piece of paper.  “I found it in the grav compartment.  She…she left it for us, right where she knew we’d find it.”

Mal takes the paper; it’s printed on both sides and ragged along one edge: a scrap torn from a book. From a red-covered schoolbook that retells the stories of dead civilizations.    

“What—” Simon’s voice catches.  “What does it say?”

“Says, _During the Napoleonic invasion of Russia in the year 1812, Czar Alexander utilized a scorched earth policy, instructing his troops to torch crops and villages as they retreated. Quickly, the Grand Armee found itself stranded without food, fodder, or shelter as the Russian winter descended. A similar policy had been used by the Portuguese during the invasion of the Iberian peninsula two years previously._ ”

“Huh,” Jayne grunts. “Good idea, that.  Burn stuff up as you go…but waddaya suppose that means?” 

“It means she’s going to Paquin.  Which means _we’re_ going to Paquin.”

Zoe considers.  “Paquin _would_ fall within the shuttle range—she could make it if she flew close to the wind, conserved her fuel…”

“We can catch up,” Kaylee calls over her shoulder, already on her way to the engine room.  “I know we can!  _Serenity_ ’ll get us there.”  

“Wait—I don’t…Stop!”  Simon grabs Kaylee’s arm as she hurries past.  “I don’t understand! That’s not a note: that’s a paragraph from a textbook!  It’s about a war _seven hundred_ years ago.  How do you know River’s on Paquin?” 

“Because she told us.”  Mal hands over the torn page so that Simon can see the underlined letters: _p_ from _Napoleonic_ , _a_ from _Alexander_ , _qui_ from _Quickly_ , _n_ at the end of _invasion_.

***

They do not reach Paquin in time to catch the missing shuttle.  Some would say they’re lucky to reach Paquin at all, but Mal thinks those folks are negative negativists who had best keep their mouths shut unless they want to pilot the boat next time.  It wasn’t _that_ bad a landing. 

“Can I open my eyes now?”  Simon calls from the galley.

“Oh, now, hush!” Kaylee remonstrates.  “That was a…well, a little more practice and we’ll, uhm, be just shiny.”

“I’m thinkin’ maybe next time I’ll just walk.” Jayne’s complexion is faintly green. 

“Any folk as wants t’steer this boat without a copilot nor any ballast can be my guest.  Else they might consider shutting their mouths ‘fore they loses their teeth,” Mal announces to the cockpit.  The galley quiets down.

Once he's sure no one is looking, Mal pats the console apologetically.  He _is_ out of practice, and he's never been much of a pilot, not for anything so agile as a Firefly.  Now, River—she had the knack and Wash...well, Wash had a gorram _gift_.  Mal's never been one to hold a poor opinion of himself, but he does know his strengths, and putting himself in Wash's pilot seat—that there is just a cruelty for all involved.  Needs must, though.  He needs Kaylee in the engine room, he needs the doc far, far away from anything mechanical, and he needs Jayne...well, he don't, but Jayne seems a dangerous thing to leave lying about unattended.  Most of all, he needs his ruttin' pilot, but there's no purchase in waiting on things as won't ever happen.

***

“What’s the plan, cap’n?”

“Plan is for you and Simon to stay here on this ship while me and Jayne and Inara go see what we can find out about River,” Mal explains.

Simon, naturally, objects.  “I don’t know why I’m stuck here with Kaylee.  River is _my_ responsibility and—”

“And haven’t you just done a bang up job of looking after her so far?”  Mal interrupts, annoyed by the expression _stuck with Kaylee_ sends across the girl’s face. “Look, if River’s been kidnapped, whoever is after her might be after you.”

“You think she’s been took?” Jayne asks.

“I don’t, in point of fact.  I think she’s gone and run off—with my _shuttle_ , I might add.  If that’s the case, the only thing might lure her back is _you_ , doctor, so you’ll stay where we can keep an eye on you, just in case.  Now—”

Mal is about to give the rest of his instructions, but Jayne, impatient as always, opens the rear hatch and suddenly their gangplank is full of clamoring refugees. 

_“—got to get off this rock—”_

_“I can pay you!  Name your pr—”_

_“—child and, please, there’s no other—”_

Mal and Jayne find themselves forcibly shoving people back off _Serenity’s_ decks, only to have them trampled by other people, pleading, shouting.  Jayne nearly unbalances when one of the refugees desperately fastens onto his shirt.    They’re about to be overrun when Inara, thinking quickly, pounds on the lever button and the gangplank starts to rise away from the dock.  Even so, a few people cling to it, rising into the air as it closes, until they lose their grip and fall out of sight.

***

Mal turns away from the door to find his crew—the four he has left, anyway—staring at him, stunned and breathless.  Beyond the bay door, they can hear people wailing and shouting.

"What," Jayne demands, wide-eyed, "What in the gorran _chow fah hai_ was that?!"

Mal worries that his hand will tremble as he reaches for the exterior comm Wash had rigged up ( _go back inside or we will blow a new crater in this little moon_ ), but it’s perfectly steady.  Of course.  He’s not _afraid_ , it was just…just a shock, that’s all.  So many people, and all of them desperate.

“People of Paquin,”  he announces slowly into the mic, trying to sound calm and authoritative, captain-like.  “We are the freight-transport ship _Serenity_ , looking for a Firefly class shuttle, should’ve docked earlier this morning or overnight.  We are going to open our airlock: if you have any information about that shuttle or its pilot. I want _one person_ to step forward.  We are willing to trade for information that is valuable to us, but if more than one person sets foot on this boat…we’ll, uh, leave.  And we’ll never come back.” 

It seems like a weak threat to him, but he can immediately hear the crowd on the other side of the door settle down.  Jayne is monitoring them through the airlock window:  “There’s a woman stepped forward.  She’s got something—a paper, she’s got a paper in her hand.”

“Just the one woman?”  Mal thinks about the folks tumbling off his gangway; he doesn’t think he could force them off again, if they decided to swarm.

“Just the one.”

“All right, then.”  On Mal’s nod, Inara opens the exterior airlock door.  He shoulders Jayne aside and looks through the window.  A tiny woman, Chinese, probably middle aged, dressed in a tunic and pants. One arm hangs limp at her side and she doesn’t seem to be carrying a weapon, just the scrap of paper.

“WE’RE GOING TO OPEN THE DOOR NOW,”  Mal yells through the glass.  “DON’T TRY ANYTHING.”

The woman nods frantically.  As soon as the airlock doors part, she worms her way through and throws herself at Mal’s feet, quick enough that Jayne doesn’t even have time to shoot her.

“Hi,”  Mal says.

The woman bows lower.  Her forehead is practically on Mal’s boots.  That’s downright unsettling.

“Uhm.  You know something about the Firefly shuttle?”

“Yes. Yes, sir.  I saw it.  Early this morning.  The pilot stopped for fuel, left a message.  She said someone would be coming for her.”  The woman peers up timidly.  “Pretty girl, but crazy.”

“That’s the one,” Jayne crows, and Kaylee kicks his ankle. 

“How did you know my sister, that she’d leave the message with you?”

The woman must hear Simon’s skepticism because she hurries to explain.  “Since the collapse, my family and I have been waiting for transport off this planet.  My husband was a minister under…the old regime and—we’ve been targeted, our friends, our neighbors.  Our house was looted, my husband was beaten in the street. They captured my sister, cut off her hair—they said she’d collaborated with the Alliance. We paid a man who said he could get us passage, but he took our money and disappeared…and there are so many people, and so few ships…” She trails off into silence, staring into middle distance.  Looking out the airlock door, Mal can see a row of shanties—cardboard, tarpaulin, wooden scraps—lining the airway: some people have been waiting a long time.

“And my sister?”  Simon’s voice is gentle, but he won’t be distracted from his original question.

“She landed her shuttle right in front of where we camp, just as the sun was rising.  She gave me the message—told me someone would be coming for her.  She said,” the woman’s blank gaze grows warmer, calmer, like she’s remembering the day she met an angel, “I’ll never forget it…she said, ‘ _the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.  The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization.  We may now return that temple to the ancient truths_.’”

“Huh,” Mal says, holding out his hand for the message. “Ain’t that a pretty thought.”  Last he checked, the money-changers were well and healthy.

He reads aloud from the paper: a wordy, boring passage about an airlift from a city called Saigon (Jayne things that’s over by Hera, but Simon says it was a city on Earth-that-Was).  The _A_ in _airlift_ is underlined: the underlined words spell out _Athena_ , the outermost of the Core planets.

“All right, then,” sighs Mal.  “Guess we’re going to Athena.”  He turns to the woman: she is dressed like a peasant, but he believes her when she says her husband was a minister. Probably an ambassador, he thinks. She talks like a Core-woman, moves like someone accustomed to luxury and power—except for that dead right arm, and maybe her husband wasn’t the only one to get set upon in the street. He does wonder what happens to a ruling class when they ain’t got no one to rule over anymore. “You and your family are welcome to accompany us that far, though I’m afraid you’ll have to bring your own food and supplies.  We ain’t got much room for baggage, b—”

“No,”  the woman stands up suddenly.  “We’re not going to Athena.  We’re not going any deeper into the Core than we already are!  You need to take us toward the Black!”

And, yeah, now he recognizes the tone: imperious, uncompromising.  Woman would’ve made a hell of an Alliance officer.  “Lady, we ain’t going to the Black. That girl you met, she’s got my shuttle, and we’re gonna get it back.”  She’s shaking her head, trying to get a word in edge-wise, but he plows ahead. It’s still his gorram ship, he won’t have the course set for him. Not by the Alliance, not ever again. “Now, I’m sorry for your hardship, but I can’t imagine you were all that crazy to go to the Black up until a few weeks ago, and you’ll just have to wait a few weeks longer if you want us to take you anywhere but Athena, ‘cause that’s where we’re going.”

“Don’t be foolish!”  the woman practically spits.  “Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said?  It’s _dangerous_.”

“Those as has a quarrel with the Alliance don’t have none with us,” Mal says.  “We’re just looking for what we’ve lost, that’s all.” 

“It doesn’t _matter_ ,” the woman insists.  “You,” she points at Inara, and then Simon,  “and you, with that dark hair.  They’ll know you’re Core-folk. And the rest of you, they won’t care.”  She stares at Kaylee so fiercely that the mechanic—possibly the least political person Mal can think of—goes pale.  “Anyway, it’s not just Alliance and Independents anymore: it people who have something and people who don’t.  You’ve got plenty to lose.”

If there’s one thing Mal has never been able to abide (and there are, in fact, many things), it’s being threatened.  “We’re going to Athena.  You coming or not?”

The woman steps back, furious.  “You let me off this ship.  And don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“No, no,” Mal mutters to himself as he opens the airlock, “we wouldn’t ever say that.”

It’s not that the warning rattles him so much, it’s what happens the woman sets foot on the ground and the others rush over to hear what she has to say.  There are a lot of people, more than could have favored the Alliance on a planet like this: times are tough for everyone. One by one, they all drop back, wander away, back to their little hovels and makeshift huts.  No one looks at _Serenity_ once they’ve learned she’s going out among the Core planets.

Mal turns away from the airlock, sees his crew—sees Jayne and Kaylee and Simon and Inara—watching him.  “Well, what’re you standing there for?  We’ve got miles to go ‘fore we reach Athena.”

***

Later, too late, Mal will realize he was stupid on Athena.  If Zoe’d been there, she would’ve told him as much, would’ve reminded him of the basic rules of combat: that you don’t never split your forces, no matter how much ground you have to cover.  All this time he’s fancied himself a soldier, but in truth, he’s forgotten everything he ever knew because it was peace-time.  Peace-time come and gone and he never even noticed. 

There’s no mob waiting for them on the docks at Athena.  There’s no one on the docks at all: the whole complex looks like an industrial derelict, for all it was once the pride of the border worlds.  Mal looks out at the empty loading bays and the runways bordered with honest-to-God _tumbleweed_.  So when Simon petitions to be allowed off-ship, Mal agrees.  

“I’m concerned...” the doctor starts. (Mal rolls his eyes.) “Well, for the obvious reasons, of course, but also…last time she wrote in code, when she—when she was in the Alliance facility—well, it was a base-8 encoding based on two separate Chinese dialects.”

“And I’m sure we’re all real impressed by that,”  Mal replies, secretly glad they were spared all that: _thank goodness for small mercies_.

“ _This_ ,”  and Simon waves the paragraph about nullification, “this is too easy—something isn’t right.

“Lotta things ain’t right,”  Mal retorts, “and you can call finding her _easy_ once we ruttin’ _find her_.”

“I think I can help,” Simon says.  “I mean—I want to.  Am going to.  I’m going to help.  You’re not leaving me behind this time, not with Kaylee or anyone else.”

“All right, then.”

“I’m serious!  There’s no reason to assume I can’t be—wait. All right?  I can go?”

“S’what I said,”  Mal shrugs: sometimes, if you agree quick enough, Simon just skates right past you, complaining all the way.  Don’t ever get old, that.

“Well—well, fine.  Fine, then.  I will.”

“You go with Jayne, search about the marketplace, see if anyone knows her or the shuttle.  Kaylee keep an eye on the ship, here. Inara’n I’ll head for the Purser’s Office.”  If the Athenian port is functioning in any way, River will have had to pay a portage fee with the Purser; there will be a record of her in the log. 

There is. Mal rubs his eyes when the account appears on the Purser’s reader screen, surprised to find the information right where it’s supposed to be:  the shuttle listed at the end of a long column of ships, a docking date some twenty-two hours previously.  The screen is cracked—looks like somebody hit it with a wrench, so Mal gives the computer the command to print and crosses his fingers until he hears a printer chatter away at the end of the long counter that runs along one wall of the empty Purser’s Office.  He and Inara haven’t seen a single soul since they left Simon and Jayne to walk across the empty airstrip to the cavernous building that houses the Purser’s records. 

Inara hands him the print-out: there’s a small column for _Pilot’s Name (Last, First, Initial_ ) and _Port of Origin_ , across which River has typed something about a queen found guilty of treason against France on October 16, 1789.  Under _Destination_ , there are notes to the effect that the queen was executed later that day and her body thrown in an unmarked grave until the Bourbon Restoration, when she was exhumed and reburied with her husband in a basilica.  Don’t make a lick of sense to Mal, who nevertheless finds all the hairs on his neck standing up…but that’s just cause the Purser’s Office is built of stone, which holds the damp something terrible.  

“We should go look for the others,” says Inara, nervously.

Mal’s got no quarrel with that—the empty airstrip gives him a notable uncomfortability—but he hesitates in front of the busted terminal.  River’s shuttle— _my shuttle_ —is the last entry, the last ship listed as entering this port, even though it’s obviously been some time since transport stopped. 

Well, last but one.  _S-E-R-E-N-I-T-Y_ , he types, hunt-and-peck, into the column for _Ship’s Name_.  He adds the ident number and is halfway through _class of ship: F-I-R-E-F—_ when Inara nudges him aside.

“Let me,” she sighs, “or we’ll be here all day. Middle initial?”

“J.”

“John?”  she asks, her fingers flying over the keyboard

Mal makes a face.  “Jeremiah.  My Ma had the religion.”

“Mmm.  The broken-hearted prophet.” Inara  sounds faintly amused. She seems to read Mal’s expression without looking up from the keyboard. “My parents were… also religious. Paquin is our port of origin?”

“Sure,” Mal says, trying to remember if he’s ever heard Inara mention her family.“Close enough.”

“Destination?”

Mal holds the print-out with the passage about the unlucky queen so Inara can read the letters River underlined: O-S-I-R-I-S.

***

The marketplace is crowded and Mal has an unpleasant flashback to Persephone which he quickly puts out of his mind.  There is no similarity—Athena is a Core planet: folks is civilized here.

Still, he feels a mite like he’s walked in on one of Inara’s fancy parties: he can feel folk watching him from the shadows of the arcade.  

“Mal, I don’t like th—” Inara starts.

“No worries,”  Mal mutters out of the side of his mouth.  “Just keep going, slow and steady, ‘til we catch up with the others.  We’ll be back on _Serenity_ ‘fore you know it.” 

The words are no sooner out of his mouth than he hears a ruckus start up from one of the allies that funnel into the market.  Somehow, Mal is not surprised at all to see Simon come racing out towards them, followed  a moment later by Jayne.

“What in the gorram ‘ver—” Mal stops short when Simon reaches them.  Boy looks like he’s been run through a meatgrinder, head first.

“They hit me,”  Simon says, sounding dazed and disbelieving.  He drags a hand across his forehead, stares at the blood on his fingers.  His puzzlement is comical, almost ( _Guy killed me_ , Mal hears Mr. Universe’s lovebot, _killed me with a sword.  How weird is that?!_ ). “They were starting something with that guy and we tried to steer away and…there were, like, twelve of them and…they _hit_ me.”  From the looks of it—doc’s right eye is swollen shut, he’s bleeding down the left side of his face, and his arm hangs at an odd angle—they did a lot more than that.

“What guy?” Mal asks, looking over Jayne’s shoulder.  On cue, a clot of Athenians spill into the marketplace. He can almost make out a young man in the middle of it.  He’s relieved to see the kid does look a bit like Simon from a distance.  Mistaken identity, is all.  Okay.  That they can deal with, though they’d better deal with it fast.  Crowd looks like it’s about to string the guy up.  Not the worst distraction Mal could think of. 

“All right,” Mal keeps his eyes on the crowd, “Jayne, you head for the ship. Inara, you stick with the doc.  I’ll cover the rear. Go slow but _don’t stop_ …”

They almost make it.  Mal can practically see the airstrip over the market buildings; he takes his eyes off the crowd for just a moment, and that’s his mistake.

The man at the center of the crowd, the one who looks like Simon, makes a break for it; he’s halfway across the open market when his pursuers catch up with him. 

“I saw her!”  he shouts before they can pull him back in. _Serenity_ ’s crew freezes, caught out in the open. “Her in the red.  Saw her—with the counselor!  The Alliance counselor! She’s a collaborator.  She’s an Alliance whore!”

On the central planets, party hosts can hire troupes of actors that post in tableaux like live statues.  Mal’s always figured it for a dull form of entertainment, but he must say it’s striking: for a split second, the marketplace is silent—just long enough for Mal to bring to mind Inara’s tryst with the tall blonde woman who was the Athenian counselor in the Alliance parliament.  Just long enough for the full focus of the mob’s wrath to refocus on Inara.

“Go!”  Mal shouts, “Run! Go, now!”  But it’s too late.  The horde surges and that moonbrain in the front has a roundhouse like two pounds of shot in a one-pound cannon. Mal can actually feel his teeth loosen when the man’s meaty fist connects with his jaw. His vision goes all blurry for a moment; he has to blink a bit to keep the world from spinning off and when he opens his eyes, Inara is gone.

 


	2. "the end of the worlds"

_My body is dead; I am the name that it had._

They lose the crowd in the wasteland around the abandoned airstrips—the mob fights with clubs and rocks, but Mal and Jayne’s guns win out once they reach open ground. Kaylee is waiting for them at the ship.

“Simon! What hap—oh, my God, Cap’n! You’re…Jayne, who were those people? Where’s Inara? Oh, Simon…”

Simon is the color of ivory under the blood and dirt on his face; he slides down to the deck. “Inara?”

“They got ‘er,” Jayne grunts, squinting at a gash on his arm, “Got hold of ‘er back by those shacks near the canal. Gorram _ow lun dun jhew hai_ gave’er up to save his own skin. Ruttin’ coward.”

“ _Dah bien!_ We’re just gonna have to get her back, then,” Mal says grimly. “Just let me grab some more ammo, got a feeling we’ll need it. How’re you fixed Jayne?”

Jayne looks at his gun, then checks the one in his thigh holder, the back-up strapped to his leg, and the four spare cartridges he keeps in various pockets along with a pouch of gunpowder tucked in a back pocket. Mal hope no one ever lights a match near him without warning.

“Eh, wouldn’t say no.”

“Wait, let me get some bandages for your arm…” Simon starts to stand up, sways weakly, and slumps back to the decking. “In just a minute, I’ll get some…yeah.”

“No time,” Mal says, remembering the savagery with which the crowd set upon Simon and then that unknown lun tao. “Seems folks on this planet have clean forgot they used to like the Alliance.”

***

  
Serenity landed on Athens in the afternoon and it is full-on dark before Mal finds Inara. In fact, if it hadn’t been for a gleam of lamplight where there shouldn’t be one, he might not’ve found her at all, and that’s a thought that makes him near-about ill.  
  
The shack was probably once a pretty little gazebo behind some Alliance brass’s summer house near the canal. Mal’s walked past it twice already, but this time there’s a spill of light across the scrubby grass when the men open the door to leave. Two men, one tall and lanky, the other round as a butterbean. Huddled in the shadow of the eaves, Mal’s undecided about which one to club first. For all he knows, they’ve got accomplices inside. There could be reinforcements out in the dark.  
  
Butterbean steps out onto the gazebo porch, tucking his shirt into his trousers. “Fine piece, there,” he remarks with satisfaction to his companion.  
  
“Alliance been holding out on us, all these years,” the tall one smirks, lighting a cigarette.  
  
“Shit, we all knew that! Still, guess we got some of our own back, now, didn’t we?”  
  
“Sorry shame I had to share it with a mutt like you,” Tall jogs his friends shoulder, nearly knocking him off the porch. They are, Mal realizes, more than a little drunk.  
  
“Well, you can go first this time,” the other man says, like he’s conferring a special favor. He stretches, unaware of Mal just six feet behind him. “I’ll join you all in a bit.”  
  
Mal jabs the muzzle of his gun into the fat man’s gut. “Ev’ning, gentleman.”  
  
“Who the—”  
  
“Nope,” Mal twists his gun into a kidney. “My turn to talk.”  
  
“Whoa,” Tall holds his hands up, then takes a long drag. “Sorry, partner. Look, we got no problem with sharing…she’s communal property now.”  
  
“Is that the case?” The smoke streams into Mal’s face; his eyes sting. “You gents been having yourself a little fun with your lady in red?”  
  
“Sure! Lord knows it’s our turn, now the Alliance is gone. Don’t know as I’d call her a lady, though,” The man eyes Mal up and down. “Look, we got’er for the next two hours, then we hand ‘er off to Marshall and Cho. But the three of us, we could have us a good time.”  
  
“You and me,” Mal says, “and him,” a twist of the gun and the fat man squeaks, “and her,” Mal jerks his head toward the closed gazebo. “I count four of us.”  
  
“What? Oh, her?” Tall snorts smoke from his nostrils like a dragon. “Hell, she don’t count for nothin’”  
  
Mal shoots him then, to hell with reinforcements. The bullet opens a third, red eye in the middle of his forehead. He cracks Butterbean upside the head with the butt of his gun before tipping them both into the canal.  
  
“Inara?” he calls quietly, tapping at the door with the muzzle of his pistol. There’s no sound on the other side. He nudges the door open, steps into the small space.  
  
She’s pressed herself as far into the corner as she can, back to the wall, and when he steps closer, she holds up a knife with a wicked long blade. “Don’t!”  
  
“Inara, it’s me. Mal.” He holsters his gun, holds up both hands. “It’s Mal.”  
  
“They’ll come back! The men who were here, they—”  
  
“They’re not coming back. I promise.” He stands still for as long as he dares, and then, remembering Marshall and Cho, he moves closer, slowly, so slowly. “Inara, we need to go. Back to the ship, away from this place.” The lantern is on the floor; the breeze from the door makes the flame flicker. When he gets closer he can see that what he thought were shadows are bruises, bloodstains. There are a ring of marks around her throat the span of a large man’s hand; her blouses are gone, her skirt is torn. Mal is careful not to let his glance stray too far; you can't kill a man twice, though he's sore-temted. He reaches out to cup the hand holding the knife: she’s shaking so hard he’s afraid she’ll cut herself.  
  
“Where did this come from, Inara? The knife?”  
  
She eyes him warily, like he might try to take it from her. “I took it. From the thin one, from his clothes while he was…busy. When they came back, I was going to kill them,” she says, matter-of-factly.  
  
She’s wild-eyed and trembling and even the thin guy outweighed her by thirty pounds at least, but Mal has absolutely no doubt that’s exactly what would have happened. “That’s my girl,” he says.  
  
“Mal?”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“Could you not touch me, please?”  
  
He steps back like her skin has scalded him. “Sorry.”  
  
“No, I’m just…” her voice wobbles for a moment and then she straightens her shoulders, regains that perfect Companion posture. “I’m just,  I’m very tired. I would like to go home.”  
  
“Yes. Okay,” Mal takes a deep breath. “We can do that.” He shrugs out of his coat and she winces when he drops it over her shoulders, covering her. He steps out onto the porch and waits for a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dark before beckoning her to follow him. At the verge of the canal, he leaves her with his gun and he darts back to the gazebo. He means to look for her slippers, but when he can’t pull his eyes away from bloody bare footprints on the floor. There are muddy marks from boots, too. Much bigger. It looks like Inara was trying to teach someone to dance. He tips the lamp over, lets the oil drip onto the wooden floor, and leaves the shack to burn to the ground.  
  


***

Mal’s a mite concerned about what the rough flint of the airstrip will do to Inara’s feet, but he doesn’t dare offer to carry her. They pick their way slowly through the abandoned dark, _Serenity_ ’s running lights shining ahead of them like beacons across a wide, dark sea.  
  
Halfway across, they hear footsteps behind them and Mal very nearly shoots an unsuspecting Jayne, who is returning to the ship from his own mission.  
  
“Found some of ‘em in an alley up beyond the market. But they ain’t there no more,” the  merc says meaningfully. He opens his mouth when he sees Inara, and then (for the first and only time, in Mal’s experience) he thinks better of his words and stays silent.  
  
The airlock door opens so quickly that Mal is sure Kaylee has been waiting for them. Simon, looking more than half-dead himself, ushers them in and Inara squints under the harsh lights of the cargo bay.  
  
“Oh, Inara,” Kaylee breathes, “your hair.” And for the first time, Mal realizes that Inara’s thick dark curls have been cut—shorn, is more like it: looks like they used a pocketknife. Dark tufts stick up like feathers; she looks impossibly young and fragile. She looks—how have they never noticed before?—like River. 

***

They are within orbit of Osiris before Mal realizes that he hasn’t told anyone other than Inara where they are going. No one has asked.

Mal is looking at a satellite scan of the planet when he hears crockery scrape in the galley, followed by one of Simon’s milquetoast curses.

“Doctor? You mind comin’ up here a moment?”

Simon steps in, a mug of tea in one hand, and with the thumb of the other stuck in his mouth. The bruises on his face have come out in full-force: he looks tattooed. “I burnt myself on the…” he trails off, seeing Mal’s face and the map on the console screen behind him. “Well,” he says matter-of-factly. “This isn’t going to be good news, is it, captain?”

Mal ignores the question. “As you might have noticed, we are already a considerable ways further among the Core planets than I like to be, doctor. Even with the Alliance gone, I got no good reason to be here, excepting for that your sister has some valuable property of mine. In fact, things being what they are—and I didn’t never expect to hear these words from my own mouth—it’s almost less safe for us now that the Alliance are gone, so—”

“Captain, I’m sure my sister had good…” Simon reconsiders, starts again: “Well, no doubt River had…reason for taking the shuttle. I’m prepared to do everything in my power to make sure your shuttle is returned to you just as soon as we find her.”

“And I don’t doubt your good intentions, but there’s a saying about just such intentions making mighty poor paving stones, so you’ll forgive me if I decide not to follow them no further. Now, I’m settled to dock at the port on Osiris and see if your sister’s left us any news, but I won’t go no further than that. I won’t risk my ship, nor will I risk such crew as I’ve got left.”

“You’re going to stop looking?” Simon says, and it’s not much of a question.

“I am. You’re welcome to stay on with us, if you like. If you care to keep going on your own, I’ll give you what supplies I can spare and send you off with no hard feelings.” Simon looks…well, Mal doesn’t choose to think on how Simon looks. It’s no matter of his: can’t be helped. “You’ve looked after me and mine real good, doc, and…Look, I’m sure your sister’s got some fine qualities, probably didn’t mean to cause no harm. But harm’s come about: Zoe left behind, shuttle gone, you yourself injured bad and Inara…well, Inara worse.”

Simon’s staring over Mal’s shoulder, his eyes fixed on the satellite image of Osiris. “I understand.”

Mal clears his throat. He was expecting a bit more of an argument. “From all accounts, things get worse from here on in. Wasn’t never much holding these worlds together besides the Alliance, and now that’s gone… ain’t no sides now, just a free for all. These worlds are ending, son, and there is no purchase in standing around to watch, you take it from me.”

“I said I understand, captain,” Simon looks into his teacup like he can read his fortune there, then clears his throat. “You’ve been more than patient, considering that River isn’t your responsibility—she’s mine. Only ever mine. I’ll keep looking for her, of course, but I completely understand that your responsibilities lie elsewhere. I do, however, have one last favor to ask: don’t go to the port. Go here.” Simon taps an area of the map that lies just outside the central city. On the satellite map it looks green and verdant, bisected by neat gray roads.

“Message only said Osiris.” Mal cautions. “Didn’t give no address.”

“That’s where my parents live,” Simon says, wryly. “Where else would she go?”

“All right, then,” Mal figures it’s the least he can do, though favors for the Tams do have a way of stretching out. “But that’s the last time I change my course for your sister, doc. That clear?”

“Crystal,” the doctor says coldly, and then pauses as he turns to go back to the galley. “I do sympathize with your position, captain. I’d suggest, however, that you think on what happened last time you suggested my sister depart this ship.”

Mal is so busy thinking on Simon’s wording—not _it’s where we grew up_ , or _it’s my home_. _It’s where my parents live_ —that he doesn’t realize what else he’s heard for near five minutes. Simon Tam just as good as threatened him. Must be the end of the worlds, for true.

 

***

 

Mal puts them down, with rather more enthusiasm than grace, in a gated park less than a half-mile from the point Simon indicated on the map. The neighborhood around the park is silent and empty, one street flooded where a water main broke. Empty windows stare at them across silent gardens that are rapidly outgrowing their once-manicured borders. It’s hot, almost tropical, and still, without a breath of breeze stirring the blood-warm air. Mal vaguely remembers that there are weather satellite around Osiris, as around all of the Core planets, but either they’ve stopped working, or there’s no one left to work them. That last option is not unlikely: they walk three long blocks and see no other living thing. Simon stops them in front of a set of tall gates, holding up an arm wordlessly, as though he doesn’t want to be the first person to break the silence.

Mal can see the Tam residence, like most of the nicer houses on Osiris, is shaped like a triangle: one point has been flattened off to create the entrance façade, with the two wings stretching out behind. Next to the gate is a plaque that reads _Festinalente_.

Mal doesn’t mean to say anything, but it slips out: “You….named your _house_?!”

“ _You_ named your ship,” Simon retorts, his eyes on the lock, which looks like someone tried to remove it with an axe.

“Ain’t the same,” a voice pipes up from the back of their crowd.

Simon doesn't even turn. “Yes, Jayne, it is _exactly_ the same.”

Simon leads them through the overgrown front garden and presses his hand to the ident pad on the scanner next to the front door, lining up his fingers with the ghostly handprint on the screen. Mal hears a _whiiir-click_ from the door and a sudden huff of air from the doctor (relief—and, what, did he think his parents would have changed the locks?) and then the door retracts into the wall and Simon Tam goes home.

Mal, Kaylee, and Inara file in after him; Jayne comes last, tugging off his hat like he’s entering a temple. The air settles still around them. It is as quiet as anything Mal can remember. On _Serenity_ , there’s always sound, even when there’s no person around: the air scrubbers whir, the life support monitors chirp, the engine lub-dubs below decks.

“Mother?” Simon calls tentatively. “Ah—Father? It’s me, Simon. I—”

He’s cut off by a tremendous thumping from above their heads; River is standing at the top of the stairs before Mal connects the sound with footsteps: she’s always moved so quiet-like onboard _Serenity_. She’s skinnier than she was—the shuttle had emergency rations enough for four people for a week, she’s been gone nearly three—but other than that, she looks like she always has. So much like their River that it’s eerie seeing her at home here.

“Simon,” River breathes, and then flings herself down the stairs so frantically that even Jayne backs up; when she throws herself into her brother’s arms, they nearly overbalance. Mal, standing behind them, can see her fingers gripping Simon’s sweater tight enough to go bloodless and white. She burrows her head into his shoulder like she wants him to absorb her, body and soul.

Finally, she steps back finally, but Mal can see her eyes darting across Simon’s face, like she’s comparing each feature with a mental picture she has stored somewhere in that vast, bubbling brain of hers. And then, as though she feels his gaze on her, River’s eyes jump suddenly over to his, so suddenly that Mal takes a step back and nearly lands on Kaylee’s toes. She surveys them all; she looks an over-long time at Inara, who looks right back without blinking.

“Well,” River says at last, “it’s about time. I thought you’d never make it!”

Simon seems to recognize that as his cue for some brotherly remonstrating. “River, my God, we were—you can’t just... You took the captain’s shuttle, you made us come halfway across the ‘verse looking for you, we left Zoe, Inara, Inara—”

“The shuttle is in the courtyard,” River says, before Simon can finish that thought. She rolls her eyes; he’s so obtuse. “I had to take it—it was too far to walk. Hey!” she turns to Kaylee, “wanna see my room?”  


***

  
River grabs a puzzled Kaylee and dugs her into one of the formal rooms opening off the entrance hall. Inara and Simon trail after them.  Jayne is casting covetous looks toward a heavily framed photo on an end table—the dark-eyed infant could be either Simon or River, but the frame is definitely silver, so Mal nudges him to follow.  There is a library with a mix of old books and glossy new discs, a sitting room with a lacquered tanzu chest and a collection of antique instruments and sound recordings ( _Whiskey, No Chaser_ , Mal reads,  _Concerto for Unaccompanied Cello_ ). The whole is pervaded by a sour, musty smell that Mal can't quite place until he notices the dried petals piled around the vases on various shelves. 

 

River walks ahead of them, chattering away first to a bewildered Kaylee and then, when she lags behind, to Inara. There are random pools of water on the slate kitchen floor; River skips around them without comment, as she does with the piles of broken bone china surrounding a tumbled tanzu chest in the dining room. Mal catches a glimpse of his fractured reflection in the smashed mirror over the lacquered sideboard. All of the windows in the conservatory are broken, vines and creepers beginning to make their way inside. The last room simply ceases, jagged plaster walls opening out into the overgrown garden.

Simon stares amazed. “River! What—?”

“Fuel tank exploded,” his sister says shortly. She rolls her eyes, exasperated, “Looters didn’t know to adjust the release valve. See?” she points over the garden wall and Mal sees that several neighboring houses are also collapsing at the rear. She talks on, leading them back through the house, but Mal stays back. He can count at least three houses where fuel tank explosions have caused the back walls to collapse, and he imagines a group of people desperate enough to try one house after another.

On the Core, where transportation techonology is much more sophisticated: people don’t have to live near their shops or their fields they way they do on the Rim. No, they live in suburbs and every day, they wake up and climb aboard shuttles or trams and go to where they work. He turns back to the house: you can’t eat music or books, no matter how valuable. The wealth and information of the Core is stored far away from here, in offices and databases. Sources of food and fuel are farther still. When the end came, people realized they needed nothing here. He knows now why it’s so quiet.

He ducks back into the shadow of the house, feeling oddly exposed in the sunlight, picks his way through the greenery and shattered glass of the conservatory, nearly walks into the middle of a conversation between Simon and Kaylee.

His mechanic is in the library, walking around wide-eyed, her hands neatly folded behind her back as though she were at a museum.

“You can touch it, you know,” Simon snaps.

She startles at his tone and he scrubs his hand over his face tiredly. “Sorry,” he apologizes. “I didn’t mean—It’s just…I left to live at school when I was eleven. Being here again is…it’s just strange, is all.”

“I don’t think I ever saw so many nice things, all in one place before,” Kaylee stutters. “Must’ve been real nice, living here with all these things that’re so…you know. Nice.”

“They’re just books.”

“Right! Of course. But real nice books.” Kaylee runs a finger along the spines. Silence. “So…you and River grew up here, didja?” As soon as the words are out of her mouth, Mal can see Kaylee wince, realizing she’s stumbled on the wrong topic.

“You want to know about growing up here?” Simon asks sharply.

“I’m not being nosy, I just—”

“My parents,” Simon interrupts, “ _adored_ each other. Their marriage was a love match, only room for two. Isn’t that ridiculous? All this, River and I, running away from home—positively adolescent, isn’t it?—and what’s the worst thing to be said about home? That my parents were never really very interested in us?” He picks up a book and starts flipping through it, far too quickly to be reading any of it. “I mean, they were fond enough of us when we were small. They were happy to provide us with the best of everything, growing up—toys, clothes, education at the finest schools, extra lessons in any area—provided we leave then play with those toys, attend those lessons, and leave them alone.”

He shuts the book, seems to be resisting the urge to throw it. “We were supposed to be seen and not heard, to be good children who became successful adults and always, always amused ourselves.” He sighs. “It would have worked, too. We would have been just fine, except for the Alliance interfering. For a long time, I blamed my parents for sending River off to school, but she wanted to go. I was away at in school myself, and then doing residencies; I basically left her with strangers. Then I blamed them for not realizing what was happening to her—but how could they? They couldn’t know she’d changed because they barely knew she’d been there in the first place. It was more my fault then theirs really— _I_ knew something was wrong, knew something had gone missing—but I blamed them. And now they’re gone.”

Mal can only see half the room from his spot behind the screen, but it looks like Simon is going to do that book a serious damage. He’s gripping it tightly enough to bend the tough leather covers. But then Kaylee, who’s always known how to fix broken things, manages to coax it back out of his hands.

“Remember how I told you about my brother—you’ll meet him someday, some time we’re out that way—but you remember, his name’s Arunah, he an’ his wife run a garage out beyond Hera?”

Simon nods.

“Well, you know what my Ma always used to say to him, whenever we’d leave the house? She’d say, _look after your sister, now_.” Kaylee shakes her head fondly. “Long after I was of an age I could look out for myself, she’d still say it, and he’d still do it.” She smooths the covers of the book, slots it back onto its space on the shelf. “D’you reckon your parents always figured you an’ River could take care of your own selves? ‘Cause if they did, they figured right.” She twines her fingers with Simon's, keeping her eyes on where they join. “It’s a heart-scald that they aren’t here…I bet they got evacuated. Don’t you figure that’s what happened? They might be looking for you and River right now! Why, I just bet…”

Mal steps silently back toward the conservatory. Considering how badly things had disintegrated on planets some distance from the Core, he’s not sure there’s much benefit in speculating on the welfare of Simon’s parents. Mal figures Simon’s a wise man to realize his childhood weren’t hardly so bad as some—Zoe’s let slip stories about her growing up that would turn your hair white—but, then, too, Mal remembers clear as day his own Ma chucking him under the chin and announcing to all and sundry that she couldn’t hardly get through the day without her boy. She’d asked often for his opinions and advice, took an interest in his boyhood hobbies, and he reckons folks are a bit like any other growing thing in that way: you don’t look in on ‘em occasionally, they’re apt to go a little wild and crazy. Look at what’s happened to the planets since the Alliance been gone…and the Alliance weren’t even a good parent! Troublesomeness, Jayne had predicted. Troublesomeness and delinquencies, and who’s to say he was so far off?

 

***

 

Now, of course, Mal’s in a fair fix.He can’t go through the library (Simon and Kaylee, reconciled and on their own—there might be kissing), so he’s got to go back they way he came.He looks hesitantly out at the garden—it’s a jungle, ridiculously lush and so overgrown that Mal has a moment’s pause about entering.But Wash had an unseemly fondness for movies where plants came alive and devoured folk foolish enough to get too close, and it’s the idea of Wash taunting him that finally persuades Mal to kick out the remaining glass and hoist himself through one of the conservatory windows.It’s not until he sees a gleam of metal that he realizes…the shuttle.He’s come all this way and nearly forgotten about it. 

River had set the shuttle down in the middle of the garden, nesting it into the grass that nearly reaches his waist, not a scratch on her.Mal’s not sure even Wash could have done that. He stands sheltered under her wing for a moment, just admiring the way she gleams in the evening sun, and realizes he can’t even see his feet for the grass and the undergrowth.How long it will take for the whole planet to look like this, now that even the looters are gone? He imagines all the folks abandoning their fine houses here, crowding into the cities.It would be like the relocation camps after the war, only worse, if that panicked woman back on Athena was to be believed (and Mal suspected she hadn’t been lying).He ducks under the shuttle wing.Good that River and Simon hadn’t been here—with their pale skin and dark hair, with those fine-schooled accents, they’d have been targeted immediately, either by folks looking to get back at Alliance supporters, or by those with no particular side who were just out for what they could get.Good…maybe even lucky, though he’s never thought to apply that adjective to the siblings Tam.

He’s running his hand along the sun-warm metal, musing, when he notices a cleared patch in the garden.Because he’s _not_ afraid, he sets out for a closer look ( _no snakes,_ he reminds himself, _there ain’t no snakes in this grass.And no tentacle plants outside of  "_ Revenge of the Deathless Orchid"—Wash surely did watch some nonsense in his day). 

Someone’s carved a little clearing around a small Japanese maple: the grass clipped, the weeds pulled, a little fence set up to keep the ivy at bay. Considering the state of the house, it might be the only spot around here that’s been tended since the Alliance fell, and Mal’s wondering over the fence— _is that a knitting needle over there, next to a chopstick?_ —when he hears rustling in the grass behind him. He spins around, nearly pitching into the tree when he catches his boot on a vine.The garden is still in the gloaming, and then there’s more rustling.Closer. _No snakes…ain’t no snakes_ —suddenly, River pops up from behind a wildly overgrown topiary.

“ _Ta ma_ de, girl,” he yelps.“First we can’t find you nowhere…”

“Gabriel Oliver Tam, Esquire,” River says, staring moonily at her hand as she fingers one of the maple leaves. “Lawmaster of this region, departed this life in the fifty-second year of his age.Also, Regan, his wife, deceased in the forty-ninth year of her age. Beloved parents.Good and faithful servants.Sacred to the memory of.”She blinks at him and holds out a chipped cup.“Want some berries?”

“Uh…”

“Inara’s asleep,” River says as though he’d asked, dropping down onto the grass and tossing a few berries into her mouth. “I think she’ll be better someday soon.”

“You seen Jayne about?”Mal joins her, after checking to make sure that the soil around the maple tree hasn’t been disturbed lately (as, perchance, by someone digging a grave…). 

“He’s stealing the silverware,” River says calmly.

“Oh.Are you… sure you want him doing that?”

River shrugs, equably. “You never know when you’ll need extra spoons.”

Mal ponders that for a moment and decides it’s probably a true statement. “Kaylee and your brother were in the library, last I checked,” he offers.

“Still are,” River replies, and Mal chokes on the berry he’s chewing.He _knows_ he’s imagining the sly little smile on her face.

“Certainly is a warm evening,” he says, once he’s recovered his breath.

“It’s getting hotter.”

“You know, it is.Thought it might cool down when the sun sets.Maybe later.”

“No, I mean it’s getting _hotter_.The whole planet.We’re too close to the sun, here, always have been.‘Swhat makes us special…central, _core_.And now it’s going to burn us up.” 

“ _Now_?!”

River investigates the bottom of her cup, like there might be more berries hidden somewhere. “Soon enough.There were satellites, but now there aren’t anymore so,” she doesn’t seem upset in the slightest,“world burns up.Like Miranda, but backwards.”

She stands up suddenly, brushes off her skirt.Behind her, the first stars have just begun to appear. “ _There are no landmarks in space,”_ River recites. “ _One portion of space is exactly like every other portion, so we cannot tell where we are.”_ She looks up, tipping her head back so far that Mal thinks for a moment she’s going to overbalance. _“We are, as it were, on an unruffled sea without compass, soundings, wind or tide, and we cannot tell in what direction we are going.”_

_ “ _ Huh,” Mal says.

“James Clerk Maxwell,” explains River, like she’s frequently given to bouts of poetizing. “Cited in _Accounts and Legends,_ page 476, in the chapter on the Quantum Revolution.”

“Can’t say as we’ve met.”

“Nevertheless, he exists.”She puts out her hand to help him up.“Come on.I’ve been waiting for you so long, and now you’re here. We should go.” 

“Where are we going?” Mal looks at her, silhouetted against the darkening sky in a garden that looks like…what was that place Shepherd Book was always talking about?Eden?

“Home,” River says, “Zoe’s waiting.”   



End file.
